Life By Lindsey Rae

It's taken a few weeks, but I've finally taken a few minutes to get some pictures of the finished house. These are from December 19th, which was 2 days before closing. So, it's completely empty. Now that I've seen it with stuff in it, I'm realizing how empty it really does look in these pictures!
When I get everything put up and things looking cute, I have to post more. But, for now, here is our finished and very empty house!

Exterior


Living Room Areas


Dining Room Area

Kitchen

Guest Bath

Master Bath and Closet

Master Bedroom

Lindsey's Office

Jerrod's Office

Upstairs Bonus Room


We still have a few smaller things we will be changing, such as putting in different taps, doing some tile in the kitchen and bathrooms and maybe a little painting...planting a few more trees next year I hope.
Jerrod got a lawn mower today. He is extremely ambitious about mowing the lawn.

Ok, so this is a little late, but I since I did not have any internet and no ability to write or post any pictures about Christmas, it just so happens that it finally makes in here in January. But, I am always late with everything, so this just fits in with me, I guess. Although, this time, it really wasn't my fault I was late!

This is what Christmas looks like when you are living and settled in one place (a.k.a. Our house 2005...we were in Canada in 2006, so we had no tree that year...2005 is as close as it gets):



This is a picture of what Christmas looks like when you have just moved into your house 4 days before (a.k.a. Our house in 2007):



Notice all my presents are in a black garbage bag. I just closed my eyes and Jerrod put them in my hands for the surprise. I kind-of-sort-of wrapped his, by putting them in gift bags. The only wrapped gifts we had came from my mom. After all that packing and having boxes everywhere, the last thing we felt like doing was finding wrapping paper to wrap presents. So, into the garbage bags they went!
We definitely didn't want to bother setting up a Christmas tree. Where would we have put it among all those boxes cluttering the floor? Luckily, Jerrod in all his creativity had made this little tree out of hangers and garland in past years, so we did have a tree...kind-of-sort-of.

So, that is the late breaking news of Christmas at the new house.

Exciting news! We finally have internet access again! I have felt completely disconnected from the world in the last while, so this is very good for me right now. It has been so difficult to get so much done that I've needed to.

We had to wait until January 2nd get an appointment to get service, but on top of that, there was problems. As it turns out, it seems that apparently the wiring needed for this street is either all, or at least partially, under our driveway. We think that what happened was that the builder asked the service provider to come out several times to move it, but they never did. So, since there was such a time crunch getting our house done, finally, they just poured concrete over top of it and figured that they would just have to come back and fix it later. Now there is a big hole beside our driveway with some newly laid sod all dug up. It's lovely.

We knew there would be some difficulty because of our past discussions with people not knowing what was going on,and of course, if you call and try to find out what's happening, you end up talking to someone in a call center in California, who has no idea.
Needless to say, they did not show up when they were supposed to on the 2nd and after being without the internet for 2 weeks I was already in no mood for delay. So, yesterday morning(and yes, I was desperate enough to actually wake up and get out of bed for this), on the 3rd, I got on the phone with some lady in customer service after being on hold for about 40 minutes, who told me that she would just go and reschedule my appointment for January 9th.
I promptly had to get into my fighting stance by this point and told her that January 9th would not work for me, because I needed internet, like, yesterday, and not a week from now. (Actually, I would have preferred to have it about 2 weeks ago...but, at least by yesterday). She gave me to her supervisor who got on to tell me that the lady was just saying what she was supposed to say, but now the supervisor would handle it and call me back later and let me know what was going on. The supervisor never did call back, but a few hours later 2 vans with internet service installers showed up and connected me back to the world.

Now I have to go research prices and sales again. I am so cheap...(did I mention that I used a 10% off coupon to save $0.04 cents at Jo-Ann a few weeks ago? I know...that's a little extreme, but at first I didn't know they were only going to take 10% off that one thing...the cashier told me I should save it and use it for something more expensive, but I always have a lot of coupons so I used it anyway.I'd only have to do that 25 times and I'd save a dollar. haha. Just kidding. I thought it was funny to save $0.04 cents afterwards!)Anyway, I like to research stuff before I buy it to see where the best sales and prices are, but I couldn't without being online! And when you get a new house and move there are inevitably so many things you have to end up buying....you have to know where the sales are....

The last week has been very busy and exhausting.I only have a moment to write, but I thought I better write something since it has been over 10 days since the last time I did.
We closed on our house on the 21st and we have been moving the last 5 days. We have got most of the stuff we need at the new house, but there are a few things left at the apartment as well as some cleaning to do and some of my unfinished projects. (I finally finished grouting my mosaic table this afternoon!)
We also don't have any internet service at our new house and won't have any until January 2nd. (This is because of a combination of having to wait for an appointment to get it set up and also what seems to be a minor problem between the service provider and the builder and not getting the wiring out to the new neighborhood like they should have.) We have our computers at our old place still and not having any internet and TV at our main residence makes me feel like I am camping.
Christmas didn't seem like it normally does yesterday. We spent a lot of the day sleeping then unpacking, opened a few presents...and more unpacking. Kind of strange for me, but I think next year will be better. You do what you can do at the time and if you have to move on Christmas, then you have to move on Christmas.
Our new house is nice...but in chaos right now as we are attempting to organize. I am going to try to post new pictures of the finished place when I get the time and the internet back!

Today I gave up my Jetta for a new car.
It is a '97 was at almost 100,000 miles and Jerrod doesn't like to keep cars after they get that many miles on them, so it was time to get something new. It was a good little car for me and I knew I would be sad to get rid of my car, because I liked it. But, at the same time, I think it was better that we got something else before it got over the 100,000 mark, because it is easier to sell/trade it while it is under and before it has any problems.
I think the reason I felt so attached to that car was because Jerrod bought it for me when we were first dating. We had known each other just about a month or two and I had been in an accident and totaled the car I was driving. I was a poor student who had to travel a two hours to school and back home everyday and was in desperate need of something drive. Jerrod found this car and bought it for me to "use" but, had basically handed it over to me as the sole driver. It saved me at the time and it was pretty amazing that he had been willing to do that for me. (That could have been a bad situation if our relationship had not worked out!) But, he must have liked me or something, because he was sure helped me out a lot.
Anyway, so, I always really appreciated having the Jetta because of that especially. But, as much as I love my Jetta, today we traded it in on a new car. I got a Mazda3, which I quite like. I really love the body style of this car.
Of all the ones I looked at, I think it's one of my favorite, (except for maybe Jerrod's BMW, but I can't drive that anyway, because it's a standard and I wouldn't want to even if I could, because I would be waaayyy too nervous touch it.) And it has a lot of nice features and is bright red...which means I might be able to find it in the parking lot, finally. Hopefully this will mean no more walking around Wal-Mart's parking lot for 20 minutes searching for my car. I'm so nervous to drive it though, because it's new and I don't want to hurt it or get it messy....not that I didn't try to drive carefully in my old car, but the new car is...new...so that gives me anxiety! Plus, I promised to try to keep it cleaner, and so I really have to do that. It's a challenge. Not because I don't want to or don't try, but I'm a artist, I'm always late and I have ADD. I just don't pay attention to those things some days! But, I'm going to try harder for the sanity of my husband.

Our house is almost finished. Jerrod went by yesterday and it was fortunate that he did, because when he got there he saw that they had put the wrong carpet in! And they had finished it throughout the ENTIRE house! It was actually the original standard carpet we had picked, but then at the beginning of September, before anything was really started, we told them we wanted to upgrade our carpet to something different and a little bit better. Initially we had thought we didn't want to pay for the better stuff because we don't plan on living in this house really long term, but after thinking about it, we decided the upgraded carpet will probably last longer and we won't have to replace it when we move out after 5 years like we might with the cheaper stuff. We thought we'd rather enjoy the carpet rather then putting in new stuff later for only someone else to enjoy.
Anyway, for whatever reason, the design studio did not pass that information onto the builder and so they didn't know that we had paid for that upgrade and they just put in the standard stuff that comes with the house. So, now they have to rip out the entire thing and replace all of it. Sucks to be them! Good thing we go by often enough to notice these mistakes to get them taken care of ahead of time, as our closing date is going to be the last day before Christmas; its tight for time. They had also put in a track light that we had requested they not do, because we are going to install our own (that we got for $11.98 at Lowes, regular $78. Good deal!) and so we asked them to take that down and re-patch some of the holes it left on the ceiling. It's better to have them do it so we don't have to. I think that was a message that was supposed to have got to them around the same time as the carpet, so someone, somewhere, didn't pass those things along. Oops.
Oh, and when I went to my house today it had lights and heat for the first time. It was sooo nice. I actually had to take my shoes off when I went in (as opposed to usually walking on the concrete floors that sometimes had mud and dirt and dust on them.) I'm always cold and in the last little while it's been a little chilly for me. But the new heated house is much better!

This video made me laugh out loud all the way through it. Jerrod even came into see what I was making so much noise about. I don't know why, but I just found it so funny. This hamster is so interested in the piece of popcorn he has that he is paralyzed by it. He even has a piano played underneath his head and doesn't seem to notice But, as soon as he looses his popcorn he suddenly comes back to consciousness and freaks out that he has lost his prize.

Yesterday I went up to our apartment Christmas party to get myself some free food. I always appreciate anything free. I guess that's why we pay the big bucks to live here. So we can get "free" food once a year. While I was there, I did see my neighbor, George, who is the elderly guy that lives in my building whom I mentioned a few weeks ago. Last time I saw him he was being carried away in an ambulance, and I hadn't seen him since, so I wasn't sure if he made it or not. But, I saw him yesterday and he told me that he had just spent nine days in the hospital from a staph infection. He didn't looks so good. He also seemed to have his speech slightly slurred, so I was wondering if maybe there was something else wrong with him. I didn't talk to him very much though because he said he had to get going so he could "talk to all the other pretty girls." And then he ran over my foot with his wheel chair.
As it turns out, tonight there was once again an ambulance, fire truck and two police cars that were by our building, I think come to take George back to the hospital. It's too bad.

Tonight was another free supper with Jerrod's work party. It was at the Opryland hotel once again this year. They did have a thing where they had a photographer taking pictures of everyone to give as a memento and you could pick up the printed picture after a few minutes. After much persuasion I was able to convince Jerrod to take a picture with me. Unfortunately, we both didn't think we looked good in it and now I am afraid I will never have any hope of getting Jerrod to take a picture again. Seriously, it's a concern. I don't know why it has to be so difficult, but it is.
When we were leaving the party, I saw my friend, Manami, working at the front desk of the hotel. I hadn't seen her in awhile and so I was really happy to run into her. I know she has been working there a lot, but hopefully when she has a day off I can get together with her again soon.
(Manami is from Japan and has done translations for my Japanese songs for me.)

Speaking of food, we also bought our fridge today. This is the one we got, excpet in black.It's an expensive little purchase, but it seems to be a necessary one. We got a Samsung with french doors.We were going to get the side-by-side originally, but decided on this one because there is more room for bigger things with French doors. Like, you can't really fit a large pizza box in the side-by-side. Although, I do prefer the side-by-side because it has the water dispenser on the outside of the door (along with lots of blue glowing lights). Ours does have the water filter/dispenser, but it's inside. Not as convenient for someone who drinks water all day like me, but I guess unless you have endless funds and can get your own custom made refrigerator, none will be absolutely perfect. You just have to balance the pros and cons with these sort of things.

But, only because I finally had to. I knew I needed to do it, but I kept thinking, "Oh well...I'm moving soon anyway, I'll just do it then". But now that time has actually came. I had to start packing because I am moving and therefore I was given orders yesterday that my task for the day was to clean my closet: Summer clothes in one bin; winter clothes in another bin.That's what he said.
And then, I felt pretty good that I could show off my newly cleaned closet after one day, when Jerrod had expected it would take at least two.Now that I'm on the closet subject, Jerrod and I are going to be sharing a closet at the new house. Does anyone get the same feeling as me that this could be a problem? Not so much for me, but...maybe for someone who might be on the side of slightly very organized...

Why does Sunday always come so quickly? It seems like as soon as we get home from church one week, it is almost time to go back again the next day; like the week always disappears somewhere in between.
We went over to Providence for a few hours this weekend and had a little lunch. (Cracker Barrel!! My favorite!) And then we also spend a few minutes window shopping. I went to TJMaxx/homegoods store and Jerrod ran over to Best Buy. While I was there I saw a Japanese family and heard them speaking Japanese. I decided to get brave and asked them if they spoke English, "eigo hanashimasuka?" And the Mother replied, "yes." So we ended up talking for awhile about then and me. I told her that I am a singer and she suggested she might like me help her daughter with some singing lessons. I told her that I'd also like to help her with English if she'd just speak Japanese with me. I need native speaker friends to practice with.
So, I gave her my card and will hope that she calls. It would be fun to meet to new Japanese people around here again!

Here's the all wonderful house pictures....kitchen is getting to look quite a bit like a kitchen. I really love the counter tops. They are almost my favorite thing! Kinda dirty right now, not too much to see, but anyway...